Ei-iE

Education International has urged the ILO and UNESCO to take immediate and effective action with respect to the attacks on schools in the Nigerian states Borno, Yobe and Adamawa by Boko Haram, a group of islamist extremists opposed to “Western education”.

Education International (EI) has provided the UN agencies with a list containing the names of 171 teachers who were assassinated in Borno alone since 2009. The latest recorded incident concerns the assassination of six teachers in their homes in the town of Dikwa (Borno) on 12 March 2014. After the brutal killings, members of Boko Haram allegedly took the teachers’ wives (4) and children (22) to an unknown location. The women and children are believed to still be in captivity.

In a letter to the Director Generals of the ILO and UNESCO, EI stresses that the authorities have not taken any type of effective action to locate the abducted members of the teachers’ families. According to EI General Secretary Fred van Leeuwen, “To date, the national, state and local authorities of Nigeria have failed to take measures to ensure the safety and security of students and teachers, particularly in the areas of the insurgency.”

Education International is urging the ILO and UNESCO to insist with the Nigerian authorities that every possible effort be made to prevent further assassinations of teachers, particularly in the areas of insurgency, and to be more vigilant in the search for the abducted schoolgirls and the members of teachers’ families.

In the letter to the ILO and UNESCO, EI also asks that “the perpetrators of these crimes be hunted down and brought to trial; and that financial compensation be awarded to the spouses and children of the assassinated teachers.”